Ring-theoretic properties of Iwasawa algebras: a survey. (Q2369722)

The title of this paper describes it quite well; it is a survey, in which many results are explained but left without proofs (ample references are provided), and it is ring-theoretic in its approach and flavour. The most important results in this direction are presented, starting from Lazard's landmark paper and leading up not only to recent results but also to a lot of interesting open questions. We try to give an impression of the principal topics covered. After an outline of the basics (completed group rings of \(p\)-adic analytic groups, crossed products, associated graded rings, filtrations), a list of the most important ring-theoretic properties of the completed group ring \(\Omega_G=(\mathbb{Z}/p)[\![G]\!]\) is established (Cor.~3.6): if \(G\) is uniform (a case to which one is often able to reduce, via crossed products), then \(\Omega_G\) is a Noetherian, Auslander-regular local domain, whose residue ring modulo the Jacobson radical is \(\mathbb{Z}/p\), and it is a maximal order in its quotient division ring of fractions. After this (\S4) it is discussed when \(\Omega_G\) and \(\Lambda_G=\mathbb{Z}_p[\![G]\!]\) are prime, and semiprime, respectively. The question when these algebras are maximal orders is open; a conjecture is given and partial results proved (with considerably more detail than in other parts of the article). Section 5 is concerned with notions of dimension. For Auslander-Gorenstein rings there is a nice definition of `canonical dimension' modeled on the theory of Macaulay rings. This applies well to Iwasawa algebras, in contrast to the Gelfand-Kirillov dimension, which does not, for straightforward reasons. However, often one can calculate the canonical dimension of a module \(M\) over \(\Omega_G\) via the GK-dimension of the associated graded module. Some care is necessary when looking at the canonical dimension, as shown by a (pathological) example in subsection 5.6. Next, Krull dimension is considered; sometimes this comes out as expected (the Krull dimension of \(\Omega_G\) being the dimension of the analytic group \(G\)), but not always as shown by an example, in which the group dimension is 8 (the Lie algebra of \(G\) being \(sl_3\)), but the Krull dimension of \(\Omega_G\) is only seven. In the sixth and concluding section, two-sided ideals are discussed. The authors make a convincing point that our knowledge on this topic is meager in general; here the density of open questions reaches its peak. -- This nicely written paper is warmly recommended reading.